Good news day!

* I heard from a long lost friend from Australia. She was one of my best friends when I lived there, but we've lost contact since a few years. Out of nowhere I got an email this afternoon from her telling me that she's in Europe (woohoo) and.... moving to the Netherlands next summer! So so cool. Can't wait :-D

* after the disaster of involuntarily having our flight from Madrid to Amsterdam rescheduled about 12 hours earlier last week, we managed to cancel that flight, get our money back, and book a much better flight late that evening. Yay.

* I am most likely going to be involved in a very cool project at work as off January. Fingers crossed it all goes like I want it to!

* am also busy at work with setting up what could be a very interesting meeting. So hoping that this will work!

Surrealities of life

This is still a couple of months away (so my next few months of Toastmasters will come in very handy) but.... I am going to give a workshop/presentation on how to jobhunt, how to figure out what you want to do as a career after finishing school, how to find that perfect job etc.

Bwahahaha! I cannot stop laughing about this - too weird.

Good food!

Have been trying out some new restaurants lately, very very good:

- last week was lunch at the Zijlstroom, a newly renovated restaurant on the outskirts of the city. Would love to try out the dinner menu there once too....

- dinner this weekend at Scheltema, another new place which doubles as a theatre complex. Much more posh than expected but good!

- today was an unexpectedly good lunch at Shirasagi, what was supposed to be a casual lunch with Koreans turned into a visit to a place where I've wanted to go for ages - great sushi and sashimi followed with nabeyaki udon. Yumm!

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In other (bad) news, the airline switched our flights which means that instead of flying home from Madrid at 7pm in January, we now have to get up ridiculously early to leave with the rescheduled flight at 7am. Argh! Guess I'll have to wait a bit more to see Madrid....

Travel planning time

I just borrowed the Morocco LP from a friend.... it's time to start finding out where exactly I'm going in January!

Wheee, this is half the fun of travelling.

Festival time

A couple of film festivals are happening, or are about to happen, so I'm seeing some good stuff:

* last week a documentary about child soldiers, political dilemma's and the very fine line between truth and fabrication at the Cinema & Justice month in Den Haag

* tickets booked for IDFA! By heart, I think I'm going to a movie on women in the Congo, on dictators in Chad, on something about Sudan and - just to be different - on elections and politics in contemporary Russia.

You'd almost think I am moving away from Asia.... Not quite so, just returned from a pretty interesting discussion night about whether to stay or go in Uruzgan, Afghanistan. Pretty good. And actually useful for work!

Friday #2: Flip Kowlier - Welgemeende

And the continuation of Friday's concert was fabulous also. Great weekend!

Friday #1: Tom Pintens.

Okay, the video is slightly odd, but the concert on Friday in Antwerp was great!

Saturday

My Saturday night:

1) seeing and hearing a trio breathtakingly play a piece by Novak on piano, cello and violin at the Pianola museum. Absolutely stunning.
2) frustratingly watch a group of friends try to find eachother in different parts of the city by frantically calling and texting. Sigh.
3) playing with all the cool kiddie science gadgets at NEMO. Whee!
4) cheering for the architects competing Idols-style to win a prestigious building project at ARCAM.
5) loving the chocolate letters at El Hema.
6) being bored while lounging between the Rembrandts at the Rijksmuseum (although I did love the chocolate fountain!).

Yep, I think those were the highlights of the night.

Where I still want to go to? The Museum of Bags and Purses!